


The Thief

by cable69



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5658649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cable69/pseuds/cable69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do you do, Mr. Spock?”</p><p>Spock tilts his head, gazing at the wound from a few angles before replying, “Why, Mr. Kirk—I rob banks."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie to you, I fucking love this story and I think it's amazing and that I am awesome. 
> 
> originally posted on ff.net; unedited

Kirk is not generally a total wimp who requires caffeinated drinks to keep from expiring, but desperate times, et cetera. Sure, he’s the man who made it through basic and officer candidates school without shedding a single tear, but he’s also the man who drinks mint chip mocha frappes (extra whip) in the summer and didn’t give up his baby blankets until well into his MBA program. He’s good with contradictions.

“And as if the merger isn’t complicated enough, then Komack comes out and tells us that we have to have all of the accounts done by Friday!” Kirk wails. It’s the middle of the day in rainy Seattle and he’s holed up in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf with a large chai tea (two soy creams, three organic sugars), a lukewarm vegan panini, and his best friend, who is trying desperately to ignore him.

“Your first world problems’re really tragic,” Bones grunts, stirring his coffee (black) for no actual reason other than to distract himself from the human train wreck that is James Tiberius Kirk. “How long are you goin’ to moan about accounts for?”

Kirk looks at his sixty year-old Patek Philippe. “My lunch isn’t over for another forty minutes,” he sniffs.

“Jesus Christ,” Bones mutters. He pushes his coffee aside and grabs Kirk by the shoulders. “Pull yourself together, Jim. I know you’re a drama queen, but just because you haven’t slept in sixty-five hours and Pike is probably gonna to fire you—” Kirk moans. “—doesn’t mean you need to irritate me about it! Listen, you can’t let a hardass McCombs ex-Vanderbilt CEO piss on your possible awesome.”

“That was really inspiring,” says Kirk, finally going for his panini. “Did Roland Emmerich write that for you?”

“I hope you die,” says Bones, letting go of Kirk disgustedly. “I hope Pike takes a TI-89 to your skull.”

Kirk makes a kissy face at him. “I love you too, Bonesy.” 

Back at work, there’s screaming. One of the techs has accidentally crashed the CCO’s server bank. Kirk sticks his head into her office on the 79th floor just as she has finished describing how exactly she is going to take his life with an Ethernet cord. “Good day, Nyota?”

“The best,” Uhura smiles, her left eye twitching. Kirk backs away.

Kirk’s staff has been working through lunch to get the accounts done for the third-quarter earnings report. Kirk sets a crate of chicken teriyaki from Osaka down on the break room table and is positively swamped with gratitude. “It’s the least I can do!” he protests as Noel tries to hug him while balancing a foot-tall stack of receipts. Rand sweeps him into his office and shows him the gratifyingly small pile of accounts that Kirk needs to do himself. Kirk only handles the stuff that’s confidential or too difficult for his staff to do in thirty minutes. Generally, he does it in five.

That’s why Kirk is the CFO of Enterprise Industries. He’s kind of a financial genius. He had read Mill and Keynes by middle school and was being harassed by MBA programs by the age of sixteen. It helped that his great-grandfather was J. P. Morgan’s best friend, and his great-grandmother was Susan B. Anthony’s, that his father made Citibank what it is today and that his mother co-founded the IMF. Kirk is working his way through a massive account like it’s butter and he’s a hot knife when Gaila, the IT manager, sticks her head around the doorjamb. 

“Karu told me that he has a seriously massive favor to ask of you,” she says. “Are you going to be at Romulus Bank anytime soon? That is, can you go to Romulus Bank for him?”

“What?” says Kirk. “Why?”

“He has some acquisition papers that he wants you to look over, before he signs them,” she says. “He loves you very much.”

“As long as he loves me to the tune of an ’89 Cristal,” says Kirk. “When does Hikaru need them looked at by?”

“The sooner the better,” says Gaila. “Or, you know, within the hour.”

x

Romulus Bank in Seattle’s downtown was the first, constructed in 1892 and redesigned in 1913, 1955, 1987, and 2012, and it serves as the now multinational bank’s headquarters. Romulus Tower looms over half of the business district. Kirk doesn’t much like RB, or that Enterprise Industries deals so much with them. All of their finances are technically above-board, but there have been a few high-profile fraud cases to go to court, and their board of directors is notorious.

Kirk steps inside the lobby, adjusting his lapels. The lobby is wide and low, done up in industrial ironworks and tiled with white Merced granite, etched at the edges and sewn through with reedy steel designs. Cold white lights with silver fixtures hang in front of mirrors. The wooden teller counters and windows are mahogany, finely dove-tailed and elegantly worn. There are no windows, but the wide bank of sliding doors at the entrance is entirely glass.

Kirk is in the middle of the lobby, removing his Enterprise Industries ID from his wallet, when the first shot rings out.

x

“Get down!”

Kirk drops. His right hand goes to his hip, scrabbling for a gun that isn’t there. Bank patrons are screaming. Ten black-suited robbers have appeared out of nowhere.

One rushes by Kirk, and without thinking, Kirk lashes out, hooking their ankle with his kick. The robber tumbles and lets out a shout. Kirk scrambles forward and disarms them, shoving a knee into the robber’s neck and raising the gun he’s grabbed from the floor.

He’s just got the sights focused on the brigands approaching the tellers when a fist hits him squarely in the jaw. He drops the gun immediately and his attacker kicks it away. The robber he’s felled rushes to their feet and snatches up their lost gun. Kirk finds himself staring cross-eyed into the barrel of somebody else’s firearm.

“No heroics, please,” says a smooth male voice from behind a featureless mask. The black clothes the thief is wearing are thin and tight: Kirk can see the man’s biceps, flexing around a red band that undoubtedly marks him as the leader. “Number Four, as you were.”

The robber Kirk had disarmed nods and hurries off. Kirk swallows. His heart rate is up because of the adrenaline. He’s not afraid at all, he realizes, looking away from the gun and into the thief’s mask. It’s good to know.

“Please, do not move,” says the thief. The eyeholes in the mask are small, and the man’s eyes are shadowed, but Kirk can tell that they are a dark, dark brown.

“You say please a lot for a bank robber,” says Kirk, breathing heavily. They must make a picture. He is on his knees in the middle of the lobby, elbows at acute angles and fingers crossed on top of his head. The thief is leaning down to aim his gun at Kirk’s skull, nothing but focus apparent in the line of his body. 

“Manners are appropriate in every situation,” says the thief. “What are you? Undercover police? Military off-rotation?”

“National Guard,” says Kirk. “What are you? The scum of the Earth?”

“By your definition, undoubtedly,” says the thief. Without looking away from Kirk he calls, “Number Eight! I will need someone to cover this Guardsman.”

“You’re needed elsewhere?” says Kirk, wondering if he can disarm this guy without getting his brains blown out.

“Always,” says the thief. He lowers his gun before Number Eight arrives, which surprises Kirk so much that he doesn’t try to disarm anybody even though he has the chance to.

While Number Eight levels their gun at Kirk’s nose, Kirk looks around the bank. A few security guards are being closely observed, along with some belligerent hostages, but Kirk is the only one receiving one-on-one treatment. He hasn’t been watching, but he thinks his guard is present because he was the only successful opposition.

It’s been ten minutes since the thief and his team stormed the bank. Already there are FBI agents, uniformed police, and reporters at the doors, gesticulating wildly and pulling out tools and snapping pictures. Kirk winces a little when he realizes that, by virtue of his location in the middle of the lobby, he’s probably the one getting photographed by the slavering media. 

After another ten minutes of the bank robbers thoroughly ignoring the media, police, SWAT, and FBI presence right outside, the man with the red band comes over to Kirk and Number Eight, bringing most of his crew with him. They confer in whispers. Kirk has been watching them directing the tellers to load mounds of cash and bonds into bags and boxes. Now, Kirk strains his ears, trying to listen to what the thief is saying to his crew, but Number Eight whistles a loud and tuneless song, and when Kirk glares at him, Number Eight winks.

The circle breaks, and the thief, the only one not hefting massive bags of cash, makes a sharp gesture. “Go,” he says. Number Eight breaks away and the thief levels his gun at Kirk’s head. The other robbers lift millions of dollars of crates and sacks and jog out a back entrance, leaving the thief alone in the lobby.

Kirk starts to say, “This doesn’t seem wise,” but before he can get the sentence out, the police are breaking down the doors. The thief grabs Kirk by the neck and drags him towards a different exit, pressing the barrel of the gun hard to Kirk’s temple. Kirk staggers hugely, trying to throw the thief off balance so he can get a good grasp of the man’s arm or torso, but it’s nothing doing: the thief has impeccable balance and incredible strength, and Kirk can only limp along, trying and failing to find purchase.

The thief drags Kirk into the bowels of the bank, down deserted office corridors and through back electrical rooms. Lights are flashing, alarms are hissing: the building has been evacuated. The sounds of their pursuers are constant, and Kirk has hope that a policeperson will leap around a corner and shoot the thief in the arm, but it never happens; always the law is a half a step behind. 

Finally, after two corridors of grime and rust and a few back staircases that Kirk needs a tetanus shot just from looking at, the thief bursts into a wide, tall room filled with flashing lights and humming machines. It’s well kept, not to mention well equipped: before Kirk can recover a modicum of balance, the thief has tied his hands tightly to an aluminum railing with a long stretch of yellow extension cable. As Kirk watches, the thief jogs to each door—there are three—and shoves storage lockers and banks of flickering equipment in front of them. 

“I’m not following your plan,” Kirk calls, yanking at the cords around his hands as he gauges the strength of his bonds. “Is it just me, or have you painted yourself into a corner here?”

The thief doesn’t bother to reply. When Kirk looks up, he’s surprised to see the thief standing in the clear center of the room, looking straight up. Kirk follows his gaze to a skylight.

“That’s at least fifty feet up,” says Kirk slowly.

“Sixty-two, to be precise,” says the thief, turning to Kirk. He’s still holding a gun. And then Kirk realizes that he—the thief—is bleeding.

“Your arm,” says Kirk, automatic. The thief glances at the alarming gash in his left shoulder.

“I do have time to tend to it,” the thief says, almost philosophical. He sits down, cross-legged, about ten meters from Kirk, and extracts a large bandage and some spray antiseptic from somewhere on his uniform. “Do you know when it happened? I was not paying attention, I must admit. I must have been clumsy somewhere along the way.”

Kirk can’t imagine any part of this man being clumsy. He says, “No, I didn’t notice until—”

He stops. The thief has just removed his mask.

Kirk’s not sure what he expected, but it wasn’t this. The thief has thin, angular features, all geometric planes and harsh line segments, but his eyes are round. He has dark, thick eyebrows and straight black hair that falls in a perfect line across his forehead. When he turns his head to look at his wound, the tendons in his neck lift up and stretch between his chin and shoulder like suspension cords on a bridge.

In a million years, Kirk is not going to admit to being distracted, to being intrigued, to being just a little bit turned on. But, as he sits awkwardly in his now very crumpled suit, tugging uselessly at the binding on his wrists, and watches the thief carefully strip off his torn black shirt, he has to bite his lip. To keep from what, he doesn’t know, but the thief’s collarbones are curved unlike the rest of him, glistening with sweat, round like a bruise or a red, glossed lip.

The thief glances up, and Kirk isn’t prepared at all for the man to smile. It’s a quick thing, just a quirk of the lip, and not at all sincere, but Kirk swallows. The thief holds eye contact with Kirk for a moment longer than is—appropriate? expected? platonic? He says, “What is your name, sir?”

“Jim Kirk,” Kirk says. “What’s yours?”

“My name is Spock,” he says. “I am very sorry to have inconvenienced you, Mr. Kirk.”

“Oh, it’s no bother,” says Kirk, trying to be light around the lump in his throat. “I was having a boring day anyway.”

“I am sure it was not,” says Spock. He has daubed blood off of his biceps and is now applying antiseptic to the wound. “What do you do, Mr. Kirk?”

“I’m the CFO for Enterprise Industries,” says Kirk. “What do you do, Mr. Spock?”

Spock tilts his head, gazing at the wound from a few angles before replying, “Why, Mr. Kirk—I rob banks. Is that not apparent?”

“That’s it?” says Kirk. “That’s how you make your living? That’s all you do?”

“Before I robbed banks, I robbed businesses. Before that, I robbed individuals. Before that, I was a soldier. And before that, I was student.”

“Of what?”

“Physics and mathematics,” says Spock, “at MIT. That is something the FBI does not know. You can tell them. Maybe then they will figure out who I am and why I am doing what I am doing.” He finishes tying the bandage around his arm and stands up, flexing his muscles against the fabric. “Mr. Kirk, it was very nice to make your acquaintance. I hope I have not ruined your day.”

“Of course not,” Kirk demurs. Spock stands and pulls his shirt over his head, leaving his mask on the floor. He looks up, towards the skylight. “Mr. Spock,” Kirk says.

“Yes?” says Spock, bringing the full glare of his gaze to rest on Kirk.

Kirk blinks. A light passes across his face, and he says, “Nothing.”

“I see,” says Spock. “My best, Mr. Kirk.”

On cue, there is a huge noise of glass shattering, and an iron bar attached to a thick length of knotted rope falls sixty feet through the broken skylight. In a smooth movement, Spock leaps on the bar and tugs the rope, balancing perfectly on his thin perch. Then he goes up, and through the roof; the helicopter wheels away, and Spock is gone.

The police bust down the doors almost a minute later. Kirk realizes only then that they’ve been trying to break through the whole time, but his ears have been forgetting to tell him. As a paramedic cuts through the cord around his wrists, and as the police shout questions at him, Kirk looks at the mask abandoned on the floor, and can’t look away. 

x

Kirk’s lawyer extracts him from the SPD debriefing labyrinth at one in the morning. Bones, Pike, and the rest of the executive board, including Sulu, are waiting for him at his apartment.

“I am so, so sorry,” moans Sulu, thrusting two bottles of Cristal into Kirk’s hands as soon as he walks through the door. “This is all my fault.”

“It’s more the fault of the bank robbers, don’t you think?” says Kirk, bemused. Sulu hugs him hugely. Kirk’s lawyer, Areel Shaw, rolls her eyes and goes over to flop on a couch next to Pike, who smiles at her.

“We were all pretty worried, Uhura says. “Dr. McCoy nearly threw a first aid kit through the window, he was that worried about your face.”

“I did not,” Bones protested, blushing and trying to hide behind his bourbon.

“Let me guess,” Kirk says, clapping Bones on the shoulder and nearly spilling his drink. “You don’t give a damn about me?”

“No damns,” Bones affirmed. “Not a single damn was given.”

“Good to know,” laughs Kirk.

Kirk serenades them with the story, which he doesn’t exaggerate too much of, until two, at which point Bones gets his doctorly side back and throws everybody out, yelling that Kirk needs to sleep so that he’ll be less insufferable the next day. Pike tells Kirk to take a day off on his way out the door, at which Kirk protests strongly until Pike silences him with one of the firmest looks Kirk has ever seen.

x

The next day, Kirk is awoken by the scent of cooking eggs.

Hazy, he doesn’t bother to put on anything but an undershirt before venturing into the kitchen, wearing that and boxers. An impeccably dressed man in a black collared shirt and slacks is pouring orange juice into two glasses. He is in profile, and Kirk does not recognize him at first. When he turns to hand one of the glasses to Kirk, Kirk nearly screams. He takes two steps backward, but Spock persists, pressing the glass carefully into Kirk’s hand.

“Good morning, Mr. Kirk,” says Spock, turning around to fetch the eggs. Kirk, the glass trembling in his hand, notes the gun shoved into the back of Spock’s pants. “Excuse the intrusion. I trust you slept well?”

“Yes, very well,” Kirk whispers, reaching for the phone on the wall. 

Spock divides the eggs into two masses and deposits them onto plates. “I have cut your telephone line, by the way,” he says, as Kirk listens to the absolute silence coming from the phone instead of a dial tone. “Additionally, I have disconnected your Internet and hidden your cellular phone.”

Kirk places the phone slowly back in its cradle. “What—what are you doing here?”

“In truth,” says Spock, setting the plates down at the table—which is set—and motioning for Kirk to join him, “I am rather bored. I thought I would come see you.”

Kirk sits down slowly in front of his plate. Spock is consuming his scrambled eggs with some enthusiasm. “You’re bored,” he repeats.

“Well,” says Spock, “more along the lines of curious. My full name did not appear in the papers today, as I had suspected it would. This surprises me. Had the police known my surname and former education, they would have been able to put two and two together and come up with my identity. But they still do not know who I am, which implies that you—” He aims his eggy fork at Kirk, who blinks. “—did not tell them. And the question is, why?”

“I didn’t want to,” says Kirk. Spock keeps staring, and Kirk babbles on. “You didn’t hurt anybody. Actually, you were really nice to the hostages. I was watching.”

“You did not want me to be caught,” Spock tries to clarify.

“Ye-es,” says Kirk, hoping Spock won’t notice the hesitation. He does, of course.

“What is the real reason?” Spock says.

Kirk snaps, “I don’t know!” He stands up, beginning to push back on the balls of his feet so that he can leap towards Spock, but Spock is aiming a gun at him again. 

“What is the real reason?” Spock repeats. “Who are you working for?” He is steel again, nothing like the playful cat burglar cooking scrambled eggs of a minute ago.

“Enterprise Industries,” Kirk says, clenching his fists. “I’m not a damn undercover operative. You can search my apartment.”

Spock raises an eyebrow. “Mr. Kirk, that is a very good idea.”

x

“I haven’t been tied up this regularly since college,” Kirk tries to joke, yanking on the silk tie wrapped thoroughly around his wrists and also around the chair he is sitting in. 

“Fascinating,” says Spock, going through Kirk’s bookshelves. “What did you do in college that involved so much knot-tying?”

“You’re kidding, right?” says Kirk, glaring at the knot over his shoulder, some sort of horrible binding knot that Houdini probably couldn’t get out of. 

“I never ‘kid’,” says Spock, and Kirk can hear the quotation marks. Spock runs a hand underneath Kirk’s shelves, probably searching for hidden compartments. Kirk sighs and watches Spock work for a while. Having completed the bookshelves, Spock turns to Kirk. “Well?” he says, absolutely no trace of sarcasm in his voice. “What did you do in college that involved so much knot-tying?”

Kirk can’t figure out if Spock is joking or not. He closes his eyes. “I had a lot of kinky sex, alright?”

Much to Kirk’s surprise, Spock doesn’t reply immediately. When Kirk opens his eyes, he sees that Spock actually looks kind of uncomfortable. It hits Kirk that he hasn’t seen Spock expressing emotion before this—other than a rather irritating smugness—and so Kirk bares his teeth in a smile.

“What, you didn’t?”

Spock turns to Kirk’s television and begins to inspect it and its hutch. “No, Mr. Kirk, I cannot say that I did.”

“That’s really surprising, considering your physique and obvious sociopathy,” Kirk snaps. 

“I assure you, Mr. Kirk, I do not have antisocial personality disorder,” says Spock. “You said yourself that my team and I treated the hostages well. You will find, in an analysis of my background and modus operandi, that I have never injured or killed.”

“You said you were a soldier,” says Kirk. 

“Membership and/or employment in a military force does not imply the inclination to or endorsement of homicide,” says Spock. “Are you a murderer, Mr. Kirk? You are a Captain. You fought in Iraq.”

“I don’t know where you heard that,” said Kirk. “I served in Afghanistan. Do better research, Mr. Spock.”

“Are you a murderer?”

“I have killed people, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Spock’s eyes go dark. “There is no difference between murder in civilian life and murder in war.”

“I beg to differ,” says Kirk. “Listen to me, debating morality with a criminal.”

Spock is silent for a long time. It takes him nearly an hour to search Kirk’s living room, dining room, and kitchen. 

When Spock finally speaks, emerging from the kitchen to stare at Kirk, it is to say, “Your apartment is very clean.”

“Thanks,” says Kirk, whose throat hurts a little from not speaking, and whose wrists are killing him—he’s been picking at this knot for what feels like a year and all he’s got is soreness. “I really love Swiffering.”

“Do you,” says Spock, glancing into Kirk’s broom cupboard. “This Swiffer is still encased in plastic wrap.”

“Well, I wear them out. That’s a new one,” Kirk explains patiently. Apparently Spock has three flaws, from Kirk’s point of view: kleptomania, asexuality, and a total lack of a sense of humor. He watches Spock close the broom closet and, noticing the jitter in Spock’s arm, asks, “How’s the wound?”

“Healing,” says Spock, and goes off to ransack Kirk’s apartment some more.

Spock finishes searching the bedroom and the bathroom within another half hour. Kirk kind of doesn’t want to know what Spock has found out about him. He watched a show with his brother last year about people who can go into a stranger’s office and then answer embarrassingly specific questions about them, and Spock definitely strikes Kirk as one of those people. He knows for sure that Spock has found his porn stash, his sex toy stash, thumbed through his photo albums, flipped through probably all of the files, images, emails, and videos on his laptop and phone, and discovered his deeply embarrassing shoebox full of blue marshmallow Peeps. 

But there’s nothing indicating that Kirk is a secret agent of some kind, which is somehow even worse than Spock knowing about Kirk’s weird obsession with Peeps, because Kirk will then actually have to explain to Spock why he didn’t tell the FBI about Spock’s revelations.

Spock comes pacing out of Kirk’s bedroom, hands behind his back. He looks suddenly menacing. Kirk wasn’t afraid when Spock was leveling a gun at him, but now, a shiver of trepidation goes rolling down his spine. 

Kirk has been at the table this whole time, and now Spock sits across from him, at the other end of the table. He clasps his fingers together in what would be a melodramatic fashion if his eyes weren’t so seriously alarming. 

“You did indeed serve in Afghanistan,” says Spock. “You have a brother named George, who has, with his wife Aurelan, three children. You received your MBA from Stanford eight years ago and worked your way with almost indecent haste up the corporate ladder. Your family is sickeningly well-connected, yet you have not profited, recently, from their diamond-studded net of connections, and indeed, are not in contact with your extended family.”

“Three guesses,” mutters Kirk, twisting in his seat. “And the first two don’t count.”

“I wondered briefly why this was, but your stash of sexually explicit materials illuminated the issue for me,” says Spock. “I assume they disapprove of your homosexuality?”

“No, please, don’t mind about my feelings, put it bluntly,” says Kirk. “Yeah, Spock. Cocksucking is not an acceptable lifestyle for a member of the great Kirk family.”

Spock is apparently zero percent surprised. “An obstacle I, too, have encountered,” he says, and Kirk seriously thinks that he might be having a seizure for a minute, because oh my god, what? By the time he’s recovered, Spock has moved on to less mind-blowing topics. “I have found no evidence that you are working undercover for Interpol, the FBI, the CIA, MI6, or any other national or international anti-crime, anti-terror, or counterintelligence agency. Therefore, I would like to pose again my initial question to you: why did you not tell the FBI about my education and name?”

Kirk has formulated a reply. “Because I thought you’d try to seek revenge on me for giving out that information.”

“Even though you noted that I was nonviolent towards yesterday’s hostages?” says Spock.

“Okay, but also, you’ve aimed a gun at my head, what, three times now? Four?”

“Point taken,” says Spock. “But you are, as I have detailed and as you of course know, a powerful, rich, and high-ranking member of Seattle society. Why would you have reason to fear me? Furthermore, I essentially gave you permission to reveal this information to the authorities.”

“Just now, you broke into my apartment, threatened to kill me—” Spock began to object. “—again with the aiming guns at my head, it’s totally a nonverbal threat—and have had me tied up for a really long time now and my shoulders hurt a lot.”

“I feel deeply for your pain,” says Spock dryly. “But I do not believe your claims.”

“Then—I just don’t know what you want from me,” says Kirk. “That’s my reasoning, and that’s all I’ve got.” He feels a flicker of panic in his stomach and starts jerking his wrists against his bindings. Something resembling concern, or maybe confusion, goes across Spock’s face. He stands, drawing the gun again, and Kirk’s head starts to hurt.

“Why can’t you believe that I’m afraid of you?” Kirk bites out. “What makes you think that I wasn’t saving my own skin yesterday?”

“Honest citizens hide nothing from the law,” says Spock, approaching, his finger wrapped coolly around the trigger of the gun. “You must be dishonest. What are you dishonest about?”

Kirk has no idea. He genuinely has no idea why he didn’t tell the police and the FBI and any of the tens of officers and agents that debriefed him yesterday about Spock. He told them about the injury and the escape, and he insisted that the thief had said nothing. He hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t reasoned why he was acting to strangely. He had simply withheld the information without any conscious reason for doing so.

See, Kirk has never done something like this before. It’s in his nature to be honest, often times painfully so. His parents had warned him that telling his extended family about his sexuality would not go well but he had told them anyway; his early professors had told him that nobody appreciated a smartass but he couldn’t help but know the right answer; he had always informed his sexual partners of exactly what he wanted and in no uncertain terms. 

“Yesterday, at the bank, you looked at me without fear,” says Spock. “But you are afraid now. What has changed? What do you have to lose?”

Kirk has absolutely no idea. 

And then, because apparently there is a God, Kirk’s doorbell rings.

x

Spock reacts like lightning. He tucks the gun into his pocket, tugs his gloves up his wrists, and without saying another word, sprints into Kirk’s bedroom. Kirk starts yelling. The doorbell goes silent, and whoever-it-is knocks. “I’m tied up!” Kirk shrieks at the door. “Get the police!”

By the time the police (along with a sleepy-looking FBI agent Kirk recognizes from yesterday) arrive, Spock is very long gone. Kirk isn’t sure how he managed to escape from the bedroom window, which is forty floors above ground level, but he’s not really surprised. It turns out that Bones was at the door. “Why did you knock?” Kirk grouses at him. “How did that make sense?”

“What’d you expect me to do, call 911 when I heard yellin’?” snaps Bones, checking Kirk’s wrists for contusions. “I was your roommate in college. I’ve heard worse.”

“He got away,” Kirk pouts. “You rang the doorbell and he threw himself out of the window. It’s all your fault.”

“Hey, I rescued you,” says Bones. “You’re the one who got yourself taken hostage.”

“Not technically a hostage situation,” says the FBI agent, who is ignoring the small army of police combing the apartment with microscopes and tweezers to drink a cup of Kirk’s very expensive Iranian coffee. “No third-party involvement.”

“Until now,” says Kirk, finally shoving Bones away.

“And the other requirement is that the aggressor has to demand something from the third party, which didn’t happen,” the agent goes on. “Do you have any bagels? I’m kinda hungry.”

“No bagels, but I’ve got a box of vegan croissants,” says Kirk. “Top cabinet over the mixer. Aren’t you supposed to be helping the police?”

“Probably,” shrugs the agent, and goes for the croissants.

“I like him,” says Kirk to Bones. Bones hits him on the arm. “Ow! What!?”

“Why’d you let a felon into your apartment? How does that make sense?”

“I did not let him in, he broke in. He’s a felon. He does that kind of thing professionally.” 

“Don’t you do that smart thing professionally? How’s that going?” 

Thankfully a policewoman comes over, preventing them from coming to blows. “Mr. Kirk,” says Officer O’Hara. “Want to tell us the tale?”

“Not really,” sighs Kirk.

“I understand,” says O’Hara, sitting down across from Kirk and stealing the FBI agent’s coffee. “However, we need to know all the details.”

x

Kirk ends up telling them Spock’s name, which he really can’t believe they didn’t know. “Apparently,” he b.s.es to O’Hara, “he let it drop during the escape and thought I heard, but I didn’t, so when you guys didn’t come after him, he came after me, because he is apparently crazy.”

O’Hara crosses her legs carefully and sits back in the chair. Bones is reading Kirk’s Entertainment Weekly and sharing more of Kirk’s expensive Iranian coffee with the FBI agent, who is at this point blatantly ignoring everything that’s happening around him. “Regardless of Spock’s potential psychological issues, we need to develop a better understanding of his patterns. None of us predicted that the Romulus Bank would be Spock’s next target, although the institution was on the list.”

“And now it’s personal, right?” says the FBI agent.

Kirk raises his eyebrows. “Meaning?”

“She’s a Romulan,” the FBI agent says, nodding at O’Hara, who merely stares at him with lidded eyes. 

“Meaning that Romulus Bank is one of the most secure financial institutions in the world,” says O’Hara. “If Spock can disable Romulus’s security and make off with millions of their dollars, then he is clearly capable of breaking any bank, anywhere. So it is personal in the sense that Spock has proven himself to be a supremely worthy opponent.”

“We should trap him,” says the FBI agent.

O’Hara stares at him. “Excuse me?”

“Presumably,” says the agent, sitting up and pulling at his shirt collar, “Spock is paranoid about his identity. Reasonable. Which is why he went after Kirk. So, we put Kirk in a safe place, and keep not running checks on his identity.”

“First,” says O’Hara, eyes narrowed, “what makes you think that Spock will come back for Kirk, especially since we will have hidden Kirk in a secure location? Second, I’ve already ordered checks on Spock’s identity.”

“Oh, I cancelled those,” says the agent, grinning slowly. “Came up with this idea a while back.”

O’Hara gives him this look that Kirk has no interest on being the receiving end of, ever. “Excuse me,” she says again, but very slowly.

“I think,” says the agent, “that we should move Kirk to your house for, oh, a week or so, to see if Spock bites.”

x

It’s a miracle that O’Hara doesn’t kill the FBI agent. Pike is phoned and basically court-ordered to give Kirk a week off. Bones, much too amused by this whole situation, asks if he can come along to keep Kirk company and generally annoy everybody, which the FBI agent acquiesces to. O’Hara steams. Kirk half really wants to go back to work and forget about all of this. Not only does he have a ton of stuff to do, like seriously a ton, and the bit with armed criminals and dishonesty and (for once) the really wrong kind of sexual attraction is freaking him out. But at the same time, the other half of him really wants to continue with this… whatever it is. Charade? Flirtation? Adventure? Bildungsroman? He can see a lot of paths for this whatever-it-is to take. The more romantic, dreamy ones end in stunningly non-bloody shoot-outs, country-fleeing, and a lot more tropical-island-sex than Kirk would care to admit to. The realistic fantasies also end in shoot-outs, but they’re mainly stunning for their graphic violence. Real life isn’t PG-13.

O’Hara, who is a senior officer on the Seattle Police Force and apparently dirty rich, has an incredible house on Mercer Island. Walking into the mansion, Kirk recognizes some of the same style of carvings from Romulus Bank. O’Hara calms down a little when the FBI agent, who has brought an honest-to-god red cooler of full of Rainier Beer, offers her one. “I know you prefer Romulan Ale, but this is a lot less potent,” he says, popping the tab. “Shouldn’t get too sloshed on duty.”

She glares at him and knocks back the can.

Kirk is being housed on the bottom floor. His guest room is more of a suite. There’s an Andrew Wyeth in the study. (Bones confides to Kirk that his room has a Cassat, “Hah!”) O’Hara gets him to sign a ton of four-point font forms that essentially allow the SPD to place video cameras around every inch of his environment and person, wire him, control his movement, and probably lay claim to his firstborn. Areel Shaw looks them over and says that they hold the SPD responsible for any harm (“Physical or psychological, that’s important,” she says) he experiences, so really it’s all good. “Unless you want personal freedom or the right to privacy.”

“Oh, how important are those?” says Kirk, and signs.

The strategy is pretty simple. O’Hara and the agent establish a perimeter around the house, all plainclothes cops and badly disguised shrubbery. They cover every inch of the mansion and grounds with cameras and microphones. They don’t do any traceable digging into Spock’s name and background. They don’t release Kirk’s whereabouts, but they do let his location become a badly kept secret. 

Kirk isn’t sure if Spock is going to bite. He can see Spock getting intensely curious about why they’ve suddenly put him under serious wraps. But he can also see Spock realizing it’s a trap and staying far away. “Either way, I’m bored,” he says to the FBI agent, who’s watching the Steelers beat up the Packers and (as is apparently normal for him) drinking another beer on-duty, “so can you at least get my boss to send over some work?”

A crate of files arrives later that day. Kirk lays claim to a desk in the main room and rips through two hundreds accounts before dinner. Bones, who actually took a week off of work to observe this nonsense, is doing paperwork. O’Hara is swishing around, out of uniform and in a really amazing evening dress, getting the house ready for the dinner party that will be held the next night. “You can’t have this shindig later?” the FBI agent says, flipping the channel to basketball. “We gotta do ID checks and everything.”

“I cannot postpone this, particularly in light of recent events,” O’Hara says irritably, arranging a vase of magenta flowers for the dinner table. “My family needs to discuss business. I have already run everyone’s IDs.”

“I should make you recuse yourself,” the FBI agent says.

“You should help me with the candles,” O’Hara says.

The FBI agent spends the rest of the evening organizing O’Hara’s shockingly large collection of candles by scent and color. O’Hara actually smiles at one point.

“Really, though,” says the FBI agent the next morning as they’re all eating breakfast. “You couldn’t have had this thing somewhere else, at least?”

“You chose my house for this operation,” says O’Hara. She snaps her fingers for another mimosa, which her mouse of a servant dashes over with. “You deal with the consequences.”

“Fair enough,” the agent shrugs. 

Kirk shovels more of his surprisingly good tofu French toast into his mouth. This whole thing is like a big grown-up sleepover. He and Bones stayed up really late the previous night watching all four Die Hard movies. O’Hara had occasionally walked on and commented on how stupid they (“they” apparently applying to Kirk and Bones half the time, the movies the other half) were, although she was more amused than really necessary by the part in the fourth movie when McClane took out a helicopter with a car. The FBI agent had started walking around in fluffy pink slippers and a tartan robe, and Kirk caught him clipping his moustache in the kitchen sink that morning. “O’Hara’s going to kill you,” Kirk had noted, pouring himself some coffee.

“Woman needs to take it down a few notches,” the agent muttered, wiggling his lip. “I recommend more beer, fewer Romulans.”

“Good formula,” said Kirk.

O’Hara forces them to help her finish setting up for the party. Kirk is put on napkin duty. By the time dinner rolls around, all Kirk can think about is napkin patterns. His hands won’t tie his tie. “Bones,” he yells. It’s six o’clock and O’Hara has been in her room for an hour. Thirty minutes ago she dragged the FBI agent into her room because she needed help picking out an outfit. 

“What,” yells Bones back.

“Come help me with my tie,” Kirk yells.

“I’ll have you arrested for indecent exposure and sexual assualt,” Bones yells.

“My fucking neck tie, Bones,” Kirk yells. “My hands don’t work anymore.”

Bones comes huffing into the room and ties Kirk’s tie for him. “Do you think the FBI agent is still alive?” he says while apparently trying to strangle Kirk with a Windsor knot.

“Oh my god, I need to breathe,” says Kirk, beating Bones away. “And probably not; I think I heard O’Hara asking him about eyeshadow earlier.”

“Christ protect his soul,” says Bones sorrowfully.

After Bones leaves, Kirk takes a second to survey himself in a mirror. He dresses in a suit and tie every day, but this is a really nice suit. The suit is gray pinstripe, perfectly tailored. He bought in the United Arab Emirates last year during a business trip to Abu Dhabi. He turns around a little in the mirror. He hasn’t told anybody this, but his favorite part about the suit is how great the pants make his butt look.

When the guests start arriving, O’Hara introduces Kirk as a fellow attendee and Bones (much to Bones’s indignation) as his date. This concerns Kirk at first because from what he knows about the Romulus family, they’re just as conservative as the Kirks, but nobody bats an eyelid, which makes sense when the current Romulan patriarch, a skinny bald man what Kirk cannot help but think of as a cocksucker mouth, shows up in this shiny black leather suit.

“Apparently,” the FBI agent says, wandering up behind Kirk and Bones, “he’s adopted. Explains a lot.”

“You survived,” Kirk notes.

“I escaped when she accidentally poked herself in the eye with her mascara brush,” says the agent, a distant horror glossing his eyes. “But I did pick out that dress.”

They all look over at O’Hara, who is smiling narrowly at some auditors. The dress is white, floor-length, and patterned with black abstract shapes. It shows off her collarbones, which are kind of amazing.

“Good choice,” says Bones, a bit hoarsely. 

Kirk wanders over to the bar for a drink. He ends up watching the security procedure. At O’Hara’s front door, a man and a woman that look like hired security are wanding people and checking their IDs and invites to a laptop, presumably with a list of invited guests up. Kirk knows that the computer is actually hooked up to the FBI’s warrant database and that the doorframe has a hastily installed metal detector in it, which is explaining why a few random people are getting escorted into a coatroom for pat-downs. He’s just finished his first rum and coke when the FBI agent comes over for a beer.

“Do you expect Spock to go for me here?” Kirk asks, folding his napkin into his highball glass. “It seems more likely that he’d try a sneak attack at night or something.”

“Here’s good because he can get close to the house, but the final distance is a lot harder than it would be without a party in full swing,” says the agent. “Which is why you’re going to stay in view of guests at all times. If you gotta take a piss, let us know.”

“That’s alarming,” says Kirk.

“That’s real hostage situations,” says the agent.

What Kirk does like about the party is that the guests are all talking about money. Kirk has a funny attitude about money. It’s not that he likes money that much. Since his family is stupid rich he’s never worried about it or thought about it. But he likes economics, financing, and banking. The industry is completely fascinating to him and always has been, even though the people are pretty much universally a bunch of privileged assholes. (He sort of is too, so that’s okay.) He makes the rounds. There are a few people there he knows, mainly insurance adjusters and personal financiers. He’s just finished having a friendly takedown of Thatcherite monetary policy with a woman from Deltan Bank when he realizes that they’ve ended up in a side room, almost blocked from everyone’s view. 

“I should go,” he says, starting to move towards the main room again. The woman, who he’s known for a few years, gets a sad expression in her eyes.

“You may not know this, but I’m from Vulca,” she says. “I’m really sorry.”

In a fast, fluid move, she reaches out and grabs his shoulder. His hands come up to disarm her, but it’s too late. Her grip tightens, and everything goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

When Kirk was in graduate school, he had extra time on his hands during his last semester. He was basically done with his dissertation by January, so he signed up for a few undergraduate classes, one of which was a history/sociology class about terrorism.

Vulca was a South East Asian island nation between Borneo and the Malaysian peninsula that had been under occupation for thousands of years. “Complicated,” said his professor, a Romulan expat. “In a word, this is the greatest understatement you could use to describe the Vulcan conflict.” The professor drew a skewed map of Vulca on the board, apologizing for his lack of artistic skill. “Does anybody know the capital of Vulca?” he asked the class, chalk at the ready.

“Shi’Kar,” said one woman.

“Volcana Regar,” said another.

“T’Paal,” said yet another.

“There,” said the professor, “is your first example.”

There were a few sure things about Vulca. The island was as large as Borneo, but long rather than roundish, stretching in a southwest-to-northeast line between Borneo, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Vulca was divided into three regions: Na’nam, Han-shir, and Xir’tan. The Vulcans were a homogenous ethnic group that spoke a language called Vulcan. (“Easy enough,” said the professor.) But there, the sureties ended. 

“Who can give me a summary of Vulcan history?” said the professor.

“Occupation by Romulans since the first millennium,” said one student.

“Invasion and occupation by the Japanese during World War Two,” said another.

“Sectarian violence between Sunni Muslims, Vulcan Traditionalists, and Vulcan Reformers going back six hundred years,” said a third.

“The Vulcan Mandate after World War One…”

“The J’dai Massacre…”

“The Twenty-Year War…”

“The Shi’Kar Rebellion…”

“The Quiet Era…”

“The Decade of Blood…”

There had not been a majority Vulcan government since the year 1349, according to Taiwanese record keepers. The Priests of the God of War in Ath’harthar kept the same records, although theirs were biased in favor of the Han-shir sepratists. There were religious conflicts within Vulcan society that started in the middle of the 300s. Vulcans had fought amongst themselves for hundreds of years. Then the Romulans, Roman immigrants to the Malay peninsula dating from the sixth century, invaded, beginning an occupation that had lasted five hundred years. Kirk had a hard time keeping up, though the professor explained the stances of all of the combatants. There were at least nine sides, as far as Kirk could count.

The class had given him some things to think about and helped him understand the news out of Vulca. But all of a sudden it becomes a little more important in Kirk’s life.

x

When Kirk wakes up, he is laying on his side, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles shackled, and there is a horrifying ache in his shoulder. The Vulca conflict is not exactly the first thing he thinks about. The first thing he thinks is Oh fuck, oh fucking fucker fuck, and also Bloody shitting OW, because his shoulder. He curses to himself for rather longer than he ought, then tries to open his eyes. Nope. Apparently he has a splitting headache as well and there’s light in the room. Light is not something he can handle currently.

“How are you?” says a smooth male voice that would sound better if his hearing weren’t so sensitive that instead of really sounding smooth and male the voice sounds like thirteen avalanches destroying a stadium full of cymbal players.

“Mah,” articulates Kirk, squeezing his eyes closed as tightly as he can. “Mrngh.”

“I see,” says the voice. “T’Pring is not well-versed in traditional Vulcan self-defense techniques, which explains the regrettable pain you now find yourself in.”

“Nargh,” Kirk agrees.

“Most nerve-pinches do not cause this level of pain. I shall bring T’Pring in for an apology soon. She should be here with some water momentarily. Can you open your eyes yet?”

Kirk does his best, and can’t. “Merrrrk,” he moans.

“I do hope your ability to speak will restore itself soon. Amusing as these noises are, I do wish to communicate with you.”

Kirk knows by now that it’s Spock talking to him. Since his hearing is extra-powerful at the moment, if not in a good way, he also knows roughly the size of the room he’s in and where Spock is in it. It’s a small room, probably rock because of how the sound bounces, and cold; Spock is against the far wall. He licks his lips, trying to get enough saliva into his mouth to really speak.

“What,” he tries, but it comes out as a rasp. He swallows a few times. “What have you got me here for?”

Spock sighs. “The temptation was too much. I have to know why you are being so secretive.”

“Are you going to torture me?” Kirk asks, finally managing to wrench his eyes open. The room is indeed stone, rough blocks that look like the kind you’d see in a stereotypical castle dungeon. Strange.

And Spock is indeed standing against the far wall. He has his hands crossed over his chest and he is eyeing Kirk with a completely blank expression. He is wearing another black collared shirt and slacks, but this shirt is unbuttoned further than the other was, revealing three or so inches of chest.

“I am not going to torture you,” says Spock, something like amusement tucked inside his voice. “I would like you to answer a few questions, however.” He crouches down, clasping his hands in front of him. “Why did the police put you into protective custody?”

“It was a trap,” says Kirk. “Didn’t work out, though.”

“Yes, I had come to that point myself,” says Spock, sounding more than a little amused. “Why did they not run any background searches on me?”

“Part of the trap,” Kirk grates out. “Listen, my arm is really hurting; can I at least turn on my back?”

“I have not said you could not move,” says Spock. “Do as you will within the confines of your bonds.”

Kirk blinks, but doesn’t say anything else. He turns himself onto his back and his shoulder stops smarting almost immediately. Spock is quiet for a long time. Kirk can just see Spock in his periphery. 

“Why?” says Spock.

“I could ask you the same thing,” says Kirk.

“You could,” says Spock. He is silent for a moment, then says, “What do you know about Vulca?”

x

“When I was fifteen,” says Spock, “Romulans destroyed my hometown. My mother was killed.”

He pours tea into a small cup. Kirk picks it up and holds it in two hands. The steam from it smells like mint and spices.

“My father sent me to live with some extended family in Washington DC. I finished high school there, and went to MIT for three years, until I heard that my father had been killed. I went back to Vulca and joined the resistance. But they were ill-equipped. I saw sixty-eight soldiers die because we did not have the medical equipment or expertise to save them. I saw fourteen women die during childbirth. I saw two hundred and twenty-nine civilians die. I saw another one hundred and seventeen soldiers die on the battlefield.”

Spock sips his tea, betraying no hint of emotion. His hands are rigid-still.

“One night, after we had lost another woman in labor, I thought it would be a good idea to steal some supplies from the Romulans or any of the other Vulcan factions nearby. I took a team and snuck out, behind the red line. We raided four Romulan storehouses and came back with sixteen crates of medical supplies. We saved nineteen soldiers with that equipment, until the Romulans launched their largest attack yet in revenge. That offensive killed thirty-eight of us.”

Numbers. He is speaking in statistics. But the way Spock is saying those numbers isn’t like he is a reporter. He says the numbers like they are the most important things he will ever say.

“I left. I told my second-in-command I was going to go get supplies without putting everyone in danger. I crossed the red line alone and dressed like a Romulan and started stealing supplies from the base camps and organizing them to be sent into the zone. They looked for me for years and could never find me. We stopped dying from flesh wounds and gangrene. I moved to the continent; I staged hospital heists in Melaka and Singapore and Phnom Penh. I started sending money back with the antibiotics. And then someone obtained a visa for me, so I went to Europe, and started on banks rather than hospitals. Frankfurt, London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich. That was when Interpol started tracking me. And then, six months ago, I came to the US. Romulus Bank seemed like the perfect target. I have been working my way to their headquarters. I spent a few months in New York, hitting brokerages and other bank headquarters, then I went to Chicago, then Houston, and then I was ready, so I came here.”

Spock finishes his tea and puts down the cup soundlessly. Kirk, who is now sitting cross-legged on the floor, untied and refreshed after being treated by a nurse and apologized to by T’Pring, has no idea what to say. He stares into his own tea.

“And so, I want to ask you,” says Spock. “Why? Will you answer me now?”

Kirk looks to the left and the right; his answer seems so silly and trivial after that. His whole life seems silly and trivial after that. The creases on Spock’s young face make sense now, the trained calm, the steel in his muscles. All Kirk has are soft hands and unscarred skin, and weird desire tucked into his heart.

“I, yes, I can answer,” says Kirk. He swallows. “I don’t—know how to say it. I didn’t say anything to the police because I didn’t want to. I don’t know—why. You were just.” He shakes his head. “You were—compelling, and I was. I don’t know. Not, on your side, but not on—their side.”

“You do not know why you withheld the information you knew,” Spock repeats. Kirk doesn’t want to look at him.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” says Kirk. “I just—didn’t say anything.”

Spock stands up, taking the tea tray with him, and leaves. He does not return for three days.

x

T’Pring becomes Kirk’s caretaker. She’s very nice, except for that one time she nerve-pinched him. It turns out that her family is from Spock’s hometown. She is an American citizen and was born in the States, but her loyalties lie with the Vulcans. She explains as much of the Vulcan situation to Kirk as she can in three days. There are still aspects of the conflict that Kirk doesn’t understand and thinks he probably never will. He asks where Spock is just once, and the look that T’Pring gives him is serious enough that he doesn’t ask again.

On the fourth day, Kirk is shaken awake. “Good morning, Mr. Kirk,” says Spock, handing him a cup of tea and an orange for breakfast. “How have you been?” To Kirk’s slight surprise, he sits down in front of Kirk’s mattress.

“Uh,” says Kirk, bleary and a little shocked. He sits up and takes a swallow of the hot tea. It burns his throat, but he needed that. “I’ve been—well? And you?”

“There have been better weeks,” says Spock. “I robbed another bank. Are you ready to be released, Mr. Kirk?”

“What?”

“I have no more need of you,” says Spock. His eyes are flinty. “I am sorry to have kept you this long, but I wanted to make sure that you were telling the truth. I needed to investigate you completely. And I have done so. Thus, you will be free to go within a few hours.”

Kirk stared. “That’s it? That’s all?”

“Yes,” says Spock. He says it with the same quiet intensity that he said those numbers with. 

“You should call me Jim,” Kirk blurts. “I mean—Mr. Kirk, it’s so formal.”

“Jim,” says Spock.

“Yeah,” says Kirk.

“Jim,” Spock repeats. He looks like he tastes the word. Then he stands. “Come with me,” he says.

x

Apparently, Kirk is in a house.

It is not a particularly nice house. The fixtures are cheap; the food in the cabinets is generic and low quality. But the rooms he is led past in the basement are incredible. They are filled with state-of-the-art computers and strongboxes, and one is stacked with medical equipment. Another room is entirely for packing. There are sacks of styrofoam peanuts and tape guns and cardboard boxes stacked around the walls. 

There are several people upstairs, sitting around a television playing a video game. Some look up as Spock and Kirk pass through the room, but they look back at the television again without interest. Spock does not speak during this part of the tour, to Kirk or to the people around the TV.

Spock takes Kirk into a small room down a dingy corridor that is entirely bookshelves. There is a little desk and a creaky chair in the middle of the room, and Spock sits in the chair. Kirk pulls a stool over from in front of the bookcases and sits too. They are close to each other.

“You will be returned to your apartment. You will be blindfolded for the drive, and we are considering medicating you so that you do not know how far away from your apartment this house is.” Kirk thinks that Spock seems uncomfortable. His fingers are tapping against the desk. “My interest in you has ceased. You will not be bothered again.”

“What do you expect me to tell the police?” Kirk says. “Do you want me to lie?”

“I do not know what you will tell the police,” says Spock. “Obviously I would prefer that you tell them as little as possible about myself and my organization. But I am the one who has told you and shown you so much, and I am prepared to deal with the consequences. I do not anticipate, should you cooperate to the fullest extent with the authorities, that they will be able to locate me or foresee my actions, but it is possible that they are cleverer than I give them credit for.”

“I don’t know what I’ll say,” Kirk says truthfully. 

“There is much you do not know,” says Spock. Kirk nods.

“I’ve been on sure footing for my whole life, but all of this is—kinda beyond me,” Kirk says honestly. “I blame you.” He smiles at Spock, which seems to discomfit him.

“Excuse me.” There is a knock on the open office door. Kirk turns around and Spock looks up. It’s T’Pring, looking apologetic. “I am sorry, Spock, but I need to use the office. Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” says Spock, standing immediately. He motions Kirk to follow him. They go into the next room on the right down the hallway. Kirk stops at the threshold. It is a bedroom.

“There is nowhere else to speak, I am sorry to say,” says Spock, just stiff enough to be obviously uncomfortable. “This is not a large house.”

“I saw,” says Kirk, biting his lip. He sees Spock register the action. 

“Do you,” says Spock, speaking very slowly, “think that it will be easy to return to your job? Do you think there will be legal complications for you?”

“No, I think it’ll be fine,” says Kirk. They are just standing there, Kirk at the entrance to the room and Spock about halfway across it. It’s not a very large or interesting bedroom. The walls are off-white and the bed is plain, like a hotel bed, a white comforter on white sheets with white pillows on top. The carpet is pale blue, and there is a single photograph of an ocean wave on the far wall. “I don’t think I’m going to tell them enough to make them curious.”

“An excellent idea,” says Spock. “Though I am biased.”

Kirk laughs. “That you are.” Without really considering what it will sound like for him to say this, he says, “And I’m not going to tell them anything about you. What you’ve told me—Spock. It’s private, I think.”

“Yes,” says Spock shortly. 

“I don’t—I would betray your trust.”

“I kidnapped you,” Spock reminds him.

“Yeah, but then you gave me really good tea,” says Kirk. “Stockholm Syndrome is better if your captor isn’t actually mean.” He grins.

“Good,” says Spock, as if he is unsure of what else to say.

Kirk sighs. “I support you,” he says. “That’s it.”

“You support me?”

“I support you,” Kirk repeats, unwilling to elaborate. 

Spock’s hands are behind his back. He takes a few steps towards Kirk. He looks both uncertain and determined.

“Do you enjoy your job?” he finally asks, hesitation obvious in his voice. “Do you enjoy your life?”

“Yeah,” says Kirk automatically. “I love it.” As he’s saying this, he’s struck by how true it is. “I love my job. I love money and finances. I just—doing this work, doing all of these accounts and managing people’s portfolios, it’s the best. I spent so long in college learning about markets and numbers and how it all worked, and it seemed like magic. And it still seems a little like magic, but now it’s magic I can use—I’m part of it, I’m a conduit, you know? And people are always saying, ‘Banking? Money? God that must be boring,’ but they have no idea.” Kirk shakes his head. “There are all of these formulas, you see. There’s this one formula—it’s my favorite—it tells you how much money your grandchild will leave to their grandchild, ceteris paribus. I always include it on people’s account notes.”

“And your life?” Spock says.

“That too,” says Kirk. “I like that too. I have these great friends. Bones. He’s insane, you know? Total germaphobe, has some serious woman issues, all kindsa grumpy. But the man makes great Long Island Iced Teas. And all of my colleagues from work—Hikaru and Pavel, and Nyota and Gaila, and Scotty—they light things up. We go on road trips to Portland sometimes and once we went camping, but we don’t talk about that after the Seaweed Incident.” Kirk sighs. “And I regret my family. What happened with them. But, everything else is shiny. My Guard weekends are even fun.” Kirk knows he isn’t saying any of this correctly. He is just telling, not showing. “I enjoy my life, yes, but that’s such an understatement. It’s incredible living here and being here; it’s like—sitting underneath a sunbeam but never getting sweaty. I don’t know; I can’t quite say it.”

“I understand,” says Spock. Kirk watches as he takes a few steps back. He opens his mouth, a little ‘o’, and closes it again, swallowing; his shoulders hunch. Then, quickly, he says, “We should leave.”

He doesn’t medicate Kirk. T’Pring wraps a blindfold tenderly across Kirk’s eyes and kisses his cheek. “I won’t say anything,” Kirk says to her. She takes his hand; her fingers are cold.

“Thank you,” she says. He smiles at her and allows other hands to lead him to a car.

x

It is a thirty-minute ride home.

Kirk tries not to pay attention to the route and succeeds. He didn’t exactly have a “what to do in case of a kidnapping” unit in his Guard training, and he’s no Sherlock Holmes, paying close attention to rights, lefts, and specific smells. Unfamiliar hands bundle him out of the car and deposit him indoors, on something solid and uncomfortable. “Count to thirty,” says a voice he doesn’t know, “and slowly, then you can take off the blindfold. We will know if you do not.”

Kirk presumes that the person means they’d know if he didn’t count slowly to thirty before taking off the blindfold, but he isn’t about to get into an argument about dangling modifiers with a mysterious possible bank robber, so he starts counting silently. At thirty he takes off the blindfold to find that he is just inside a bus terminal a few blocks from his apartment. There are no familiar cars outside.

He walks over to a policewoman and taps her on the shoulder. She turns around, raising a brow at him. “Could you do me a favor?” he says. “Get Officer O’Hara on the radio and tell her that Jim Kirk is back in town.”

x

This is the worst debriefing yet.

Even the FBI agent looks like he cares about what’s happening. As he is bundled into the police station, Kirk hears Bones’s yells over the hubbub, but O’Hara keeps tugging him grimly onward. Finally she deposits Kirk in an interrogation room and sits smoothly down in front of him, her pale eyes flashing. The FBI agent, frowning, trains a light in Kirk’s face.

“Tell us everything,” says O’Hara.

For a moment Kirk nearly does. It’s not a very long moment, though; not a moment that he can extract any feelings from other than a vague sense of discomfort and wrongness. 

“I never knew where I was,” he says truthfully. “And I never saw him—Spock, I mean. There was a woman, but it was really dark where they were holding me, and I only ever heard her voice. Did they—did they try to ransom me?”

“No,” says the FBI agent, stroking his moustache and looking oddly somber. “You disappeared from the party and that’s all we’ve heard of you for the past four days.”

“Is Bones okay?” says Kirk quietly.

“He is perfectly fine now,” says O’Hara briskly. The FBI agent gives Kirk a look that shows how not okay Bones is. “Was the woman the only person you interacted with?”

The questioning goes on for the next three hours. Kirk, who knows the basic principle of lying, tries to keep the details fresh but simple, and though there are a few times where he knows he has contradicted himself, he thinks that they were the type of inconsistencies everyone recounted in true stories. O’Hara and the agent never seem suspicious of his story. 

They have to let him back into his apartment with the help of a locksmith since his keys had disappeared when he’d been kidnapped. Kirk goes straight to his phone and calls Bones, who shouts at him before ten minutes before coming over all sobby and insisting on bringing Kirk some food. Kirk tidies absently for half an hour, until there’s a knock on his door and there’s Bones, standing there with a basket of barbecue and tears all over his face.

“Don’t you ever!” he roars at Kirk and flings his arms around Kirk’s chest. Kirk pats Bones’s heaving back awkwardly. 

“I’m fine, Bonesy,” insists Kirk, trying to shove the larger man off of him. “Seriously, I’m okay, they were actually pretty nice—”

“You idiot!” Bones yells suddenly, throwing himself off of Kirk and punching him in the arm so hard Kirk gasps. “You fuckin’ idiot! What were you thinkin’, goin’ in a room with a stranger like that, I should throw you out a window!”

“Oh God,” says Kirk, backing away and rubbing his shoulder, “I swear never to disappear again, just please stop, please.”

Bones force-feeds him ribs and spicy sausage until Kirk takes refuge in the bathroom, at which point Bones starts trying to push cheddar cheese slices under the door. Finally Kirk comes out and they have a nicely profound conversation about how much they love each other and how Bones is going to put a tracking device in Kirk’s intestines. Bones looks so concerned for so long that Kirk is, very fleetingly, sad about how straight Bones is—but it would never work out.

Eventually Bones falls asleep on the couch and Kirk curls up in an armchair, staring out the window at the full moon, listening to Bones’s snoring and wondering if he should get his locks changed.

x

The next day, after Bones showers blearily in his bathroom and scowls at Kirk over his coffee while Kirk pretends to read the paper and then finally leaves for work, Kirk stares at his lock some more. He should get it changed, he knows. He’s surprised the police haven’t said anything about it. They must know that Spock has his keys. Maybe it’s a setup. Kirk peers out into the hallway, looking for newly installed cameras. Nothing, as far as he can see. 

He distracts himself by calling Pike, who, like Bones, yells at him for at least half an hour before starting to cry a bit. Pike tells him that they’ve been dealing just fine without him (which probably isn’t true; he can hear Uhura screaming at some pour soul in the background) and that he should come back to work whenever he’s ready. “Take your time,” says Pike soothingly, over the sounds of Uhura breaking something. “We only need you when you’re ready to come in.”

So Kirk goes back to the door and stares at the lock for a few minutes. He’s just turning away to do something, anything other than think about Spock when the doorknob turns and a pale, sharp face with black hair appears around the edge.

“Jim?” says Spock, hard-edged as ever.

Jim leaps forward, drags him into the room, and hugs him hugely.

When Kirk lets go, Spock looks deeply uncomfortable. He looks down, and Kirk is struck by how long his lashes are. All of a sudden Spock is vulnerable and soft. Kirk thinks that one touch would shatter him. “I asked you, back at the house, if you enjoyed your life,” Spock says abruptly, then stops.

“Yes?” Kirk prompts him. “What is it?”

“I,” says Spock, looking up, his eyes glassy, “I do not enjoy my life.” He breathes, almost chokes. “I should. I am luckier than so many of my people. I—lead an exciting life. But there is no one in it.”

Spock bows his head again, his hair falling so that Kirk cannot see his eyes. Kirk touches Spock’s hand. “Hey,” he says, making it up as he goes but knowing he means it, “it would be really complicated for me to be in it, but, listen—I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far. And it’s crazy, but, Spock, I’d love to help you enjoy your life. I would. I think you deserve it.”

Spock’s hand seems to grow warmer in his. Spock looks up. 

“Let’s go out,” says Kirk. “They don’t know what you look like, do they? Come on—it’s the beginning of the day. We can go shopping, or out to eat lunch—we can go sailing, we can to go a bookstore, we can get coffee and nap in a park. Come on!”

x

Kirk had pranced around Seattle with other hot men plenty of times. He’d taken dates to coffee, the park, all of the places he’d recommended to Spock. Once he and a particularly adventurous date had managed a quickie on the Space Needle, which Kirk rather thought they should give him a trophy for. Anyway, the point is that Kirk knows what a good time is like.

But this, with Spock, even though they’re not dating—is the best.

They start out with coffee. Kirk orders a frappe with so much whipped cream on it that he has to get an extra cup. Spock tries to order a coffee, black, but Kirk convinces him to at least try a latte or a mocha or something, so Spock gets a caramel macchiato. He makes faces as he sucks the whipped cream off the top but Kirk later forces him to admit that it is “quite wonderful.”

“So where now?” says Kirk, leaning against Spock. They’re standing on the corner of Cherry and First, right outside of the Seattle’s Best they’ve just exited. 

“A green space,” says Spock firmly. Spock is holding the coffee close to his face, which Kirk finds deeply adorable. So they make their way over to Pioneer Square.

Somebody has yarnbombed the place recently. The thin, greening tree trunks are wrapped in technicolor socks of purled yarn. Kirk laughs his way over to a bench, but Spock goes up to all of the trees and stares closely at the yarn. Then he goes back over to Kirk, frowning.

“I do not understand the purpose of this,” says Spock.

“Never seen yarnbombing before?” says Kirk. “It’s a great idea, look—” On his phone, he pulls up a photo of the Wall Street bull covered in a camo-pink bodysock. “You know, art as protest.”

“Art,” Spock repeats, “as protest.”

Kirk puts his phone away, worried that he’s struck a nerve. If anyone knows about protest, after all…. But Spock smiles at him. “You have so few problems here that you can protest against aesthetics.”

“Well,” says Kirk. “That’s certainly not true. But we’re not putting all of our energies into basic survival, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“There seem like there could be no problems here,” says Spock. But he shakes his head. “What am I saying? I was in the States for six years, for high school and college. I know that is not true.”

“I’m… glad you know it,” says Kirk truthfully. “Nowhere’s flawless.”

“Sweden,” says Spock.

“Oh, come on, they’re having immigration problems.”

Spock smiles. “Yes, I know. I was making a joke.”

“Oh,” laughs Kirk. “Sorry, it’s hard to tell.”

After they finish their coffee, they wander around Pioneer Square some more, finding out that the yarnbombing is actually an art installation, which leads to a grandiose discussion about art in which Kirk attempts to use the phrase “postmodernism,” which leads to Spock asking Kirk if he can define “postmodernism,” which leads to Kirk feeling dumber than he has since Bones dragged him to a medical conference a few years back. “Uh, well, after Modernism ran its course, there was a backlash, and—”

“And Modernism is?” says Spock.

“Oh, fuck you,” says Kirk, and drags him into clothing store nearby.

They shop for most of the morning. Kirk convinces Spock to purchase Cool Clothes and then actually wear them, which convinces him that Christmas has come early. Previously Spock has worn large quantities of black, but Kirk manages to stuff him into very nice (and tight) blue jeans, a v-necked surfer t-shirt, a corduroy jacket, and—heaven help him—a scarf. Spock emerges from the mall dressing room looking like a legitimate hipster.

“This is awesome,” says Kirk, drinking in the view as he prowls a 360 around Spock. Spock is blushing enthusiastically and clutching the ends of the scarf, which he had actually picked out himself. 

“These pants are rather tight,” he says, voice a little high-pitched.

“This is true,” says Kirk, who is just gonna tuck that mental image away for a better time. Wow. 

“But I like the scarf,” Spock says uncertainly, twisting it in his hands. 

“So do I,” says Kirk. “So do I.”

They have to deposit bags at Kirk’s apartment before lunch, at which point Spock has an attack of conscience. “I cannot waste money like this!” Spock hisses, trying to get at the bags to throw them over the balcony. “This is quite illogical!”

“Dude!” Kirk insists, holding Spock back. (Spock obviously isn’t trying very hard if Kirk can actually restrain him.) “You deserve a holiday! And your own income! I mean, I get not wanting to spend that much money on clothes, but come on, your entire wardrobe is black and you gotta branch out some time! You only spent like one fifty, man, calm yourself.”

He eventually wrestles Spock to an Italian bistro for lunch. Spock eats two helpings of vegetarian lasagna with an expression of bliss and, to Kirk’s shock, has never had a soft drink before and so drinks four glasses of Coke. Then he hiccups. Kirk wants to kill him for being this adorable.

All around, it’s an unnecessarily fluffy day. They go to two art museums, three galleries, a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner—Spock, who can speak Vietnamese and is apparently an expert on the cuisine, orders dishes that Kirk has never heard of and can barely pronounce that are amazing—and end up at a book store. They read for a few hours, settled into cushy armchairs, before Kirk glances at his watch, leans over to Spock and says, “Have you ever been to a club?”

And so they go to 1701, the self-proclaimed “best gay bar in Seattle.”

x

When Kirk wakes up the next morning, all he sees is glitter.

You know, he thinks to himself, attempting to move his legs, it’s been a tough couple of days. He is alone in his bed. And fully dressed. And there is genuinely a pool of glitter in front of his face that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. What.

Once he regains the ability to walk, he works his way into the living room. Spock is actually asleep on the floor, using his shopping bags from yesterday as pillows. He looks serene except for the lipstick on his face.

Kirk remembers vaguely that it was drag night—which might explain the glitter—and checks the bathrooms for drag queens. Nobody. Presumably they came home alone. Which is probably for the best anyway. Kirk makes them scrambled eggs that are done by the time Spock wakes up. As Spock sits down at the table, Kirk is reminded of the last time they both sat at the table. It was rather different. Spock had tied him to a chair and proceeded to ransack his apartment. 

Kirk takes a moment to ask himself if he is insane, crazy, an idiot, or just plan stupid, and then looks across the table at Spock. Spock’s eyes are still heavy from sleep, and the lipstick blurs his face. His hair is sticking up and, Christ, he is still wearing his scarf. He looks nothing like he had the first time Kirk had seen him, armed and dangerous and robbing a bank.

“Thank you,” Spock mutters concerning the eggs, and is silent through breakfast. Kirk is unoffended; Spock clearly has a hangover of high magnitude. 

“What’s on for today?” says Kirk. “Shall we stay in and watch movies? Go hang out at a bookstore again?”

Spock stops chewing for a second. Then he looks up at Kirk. “Jim,” he says, “I should go.”

Kirk feels his stomach disappear. I am an idiot, he thinks hollowly. “Uh,” he says, trying not to show how floored he feels. How had he not seen this coming? How had he forgotten? “Yeah, you should. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

“I need to return home,” says Spock quietly. “I am going to shower.” And he puts his fork down, pushes his chair back, and leaves.

It’s not until he hears the shower running that Kirk leans forward, puts his face in his hands, and says, “Fuck.”

x

By the time Spock finishes his shower, Kirk has put the breakfast dishes away, scraped the glitter off of the bed, and tidied the apartment a bit. Spock comes out damp-haired and fully clothed. 

“Jim,” he says, truly sincere, “I had a wonderful time.”

“Good,” says Kirk, trying not to sound like this is the worst he’s ever felt. “I did too. You should come back.”

“I think I will,” says Spock, looking a bit surprised that he’s saying it. “I do mean it. I have enjoyed this time. And I… I think I need this.”

“Yeah, you do,” says Kirk.

“Well,” says Spock, and picks up his bags. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” says Kirk.

And then—just like that—Spock is gone. The door is closing—closed. He’s alone in the apartment. Spock is gone. Spock is gone.

“Fuck,” says Kirk again. He reaches his hands into his hair and tugs energetically. He waits a minute. Then he clenches his fist and says aloud, “I am an idiot,” and runs for the door.

How far can Spock have gotten? he thinks, throwing himself down the stairs. It’s a wonder he doesn’t fall and die. He sprints out the front door onto the street and almost gets himself hit by a taxi. Then he almost knocks over a grocery-carrying couple. He looks back and forth, but he can’t see Spock anywh—wait! That’s him disappearing around the corner!

Kirk takes off, dodging pedestrians and almost breaking his neck on a dog leash. He turns the corner and there is Spock, walking with his head down and a few bags in his right hand. He has car keys in his left hand. Kirk pauses to compose himself, starts forward, and stops like he’s run into a wall, because just yards in front of Spock, leaning against a parked car and watching him approach, is Officer O’Hara.

“Fuck,” says Kirk for the third time that day.

Kirk is in an agony of indecision when Spock finally looks up, spots O’Hara, and reacts like a horse hearing a gunshot. Spock drops the bags and starts running dead-out across the street, taking a hard left. O’Hara shoots after him, and to Kirk’s horror, she draws her gun.

“Stop! Police!” she yells, and alarmed pedestrians scurry out of their way. Spock is running on the opposite side of the street now, back towards Kirk, who still doesn’t know if he should show himself. Neither Spock or O’Hara seems to have noticed him. O’Hara keeps her gun down. She’s moving slower—Spock can go flat out, using his arms, but O’Hara’s weapon is keeping her speed down.

Kirk darts back around the corner; Spock looks like he’s coming back to familiar territory. But instead of heading towards Kirk’s apartment building, he throws himself into an alley across the street. O’Hara follows him, loosing ground. Kirk has a brainwave and runs back for the bags Spock dropped; nobody notices him pick them up. He doesn’t know what else to do, so he goes back to the front of his apartment building, staring desperately into the now-empty alley. Nothing. Nothing for five minutes, ten. He dashes up to his apartment and empties the contents of the bags into his dirty laundry basket and disposes of the bags themselves in the common trash bin in the lobby. He watches the alley from the mail niche, through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Nothing. Nothing. No one.

And he can’t just sit there, so he goes outside, hesitates, and crosses the street into the alley. 

The alley apparently leads into a bit of a labyrinth. He jogs around, but it’s empty but for fluttering trash; a rat scurries across his path at one point. He comes out a few blocks away, between a Subway and a jewelry store. He realizes that there’s a police station another couple of blocks down from him so he starts walking toward it.

To his definite shock and alarm, he spots the FBI agent sitting in front of a Starbucks a block and a half later. The agent, who is much faster and smarter than he looks, recognizes Kirk before Kirk even sees him and waves him over the moment they make eye contact. Kirk crosses the street, trying not to be hit by cars or look suspicious.

“Hey,” he says to the agent. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, pretty well,” says the agent, leaning back in his chair. “Where’re you headed?”

“Bank,” says Kirk automatically. He smiles. “You should escort me, make sure nothing happens.”

“Might be a good idea,” says the agent seriously. “O’Hara nearly caught Spock a few minutes ago.”

“What?” says Kirk, trying to force the relief in his voice to sound like shock. “He’s in the city?”

“Flesh and bones,” says the agent. “Balls o’steel, that one. Keep a lookout, yeah? We don’t think he’ll kidnap you again, but,” he shrugs. “I wanted to put a security detail on you but O’Hara convinced me that’d be a bad idea.”

“Why’d she say that?” says Kirk.

“She seemed to think you were out of danger,” says the agent. “But after this—if he’s back in Seattle—maybe we should put you into protective custody again.”

“Yes, and it went so well last time,” says Kirk.

The agent harrumphs and takes an extra-large gulp of coffee. “Shit happens,” he grunts. “Want to come to the station and make fun of how wrong O’Hara is about all this?”

“I don’t think I need security,” says Kirk. “I got the impression that he was done with me. I suppose I was wrong about him leaving town, but that was something he said, not something I understood.”

The agent nods. “I understand the difference. We’ll be in contact, then.” He stands up, claps Kirk on the shoulder, and walks off.

Kirk feels rather weak. He walks into the Starbucks and gets in line and orders a venti anything with three shots of espresso and gives the barista a twenty and tells him to keep the change. He decides to go back to his apartment. He walks there in something of a haze. The stairs seem far apart and high up. He goes in to his apartment.

He doesn’t notice that the door is unlocked.

He puts his coffee on the kitchen counter and goes to the window and stares out at Seattle. Steel-gray buildings, yellowish road, then water, great, gray-blue expanses of it, rolling into a bank of fog. And a hand, gently on his shoulder, smooth.

“Jim,” says Spock, and when Kirk turns around, Spock kisses him.

Kissing Spock isn’t strange at all. And it’s like nothing he’s ever done before. Kissing Spock is like being on fire everywhere. And kissing Spock is like falling through a sheet of ice into a frozen lake. It’s everything, all at the same time; they’re standing, then Spock has Kirk against a wall, then they’re almost on the floor, then they’re bumping into the table and falling across the couch. Kirk has all these hazy thoughts, like that he had locked the door and that maybe he doesn’t want to have sex right now and what if the police come back? but they’re all pushed out of his mind by the sharp, live feel of Spock’s hands, flitting around his hipbones just under his shirt, Spock’s teeth biting his lip, Spock’s weight, large and hot and real on top of him.

Kirk manages a few “oh”s and some rather drawn out “ah”s, and some hissing when Spock starts doing this thing with his thumb, before he finally gasps wetly and pushes Spock away. Spock’s eyes are wide and blown, and he’s breathing—predatorily. Kirk doesn’t know how anyone can have that much actual menace in their expression and pose and still be so devastatingly sexy.

“You came back,” Kirk says, trying not to choke or cry or both.

“There was a complication,” says Spock, his sharp face growing wary. He’s posed over Kirk on the couch, pressing most of him down, his arms framing Kirk’s face.

“O’Hara—I saw,” says Kirk. “I went after you.”

“You did?” says Spock, quirking an eyebrow.

“I wanted to do this,” says Kirk; he can’t help it. He reaches up and pulls Spock back down.

x

Spock leaves the apartment after only thirty minutes. He gives Kirk a phone that Kirk hides in an empty jar of mustard in his cabinet. It is very difficult for Spock to leave. They both know that they’re not going to see each other for some months, and this is all very new and exciting, and kissing is fun, and, well, it is very difficult for Spock to leave. He tears himself away with a fast goodbye kiss, leaving Kirk alone. But less alone than he felt when Spock left the first time.

Spock needs to leave the US, and he does. They keep track of each other. Spock hides out in Europe for a while, only pulling a few jobs. Kirk pulls strings at Enterprise Industries and gets himself sent to Ireland for a conference. Spock meets him there.

They try to make it special but they’re both in a hurry; the hotel room is the first place they go. No clothes, first, then no words; it’s over faster than it should be and a thousand times more wonderful than either of them expected. 

“I think we can do this,” says Kirk slowly, wrapping his arms tighter around Spock’s torso. “Maybe you can get injured and retire soon. Or I can. I can do books for you guys, you know. I am a genius.”

“This is true,” Spock murmurs, his face buried in the top of Kirk’s sweaty head. They are both quiet for a while. “This is not what I thought would happen when I robbed that bank,” Spock says eventually.

“You thought,” chuckles Kirk, closing his eyes and breathing in Spock’s heavy scent. “But it sure worked out.”

“Yes,” says Spock.

“A happy ending for the thief,” smiles Kirk, turning his head up for a kiss. “He deserves it, you know.”

Spock says, “Yes, I am beginning to agree.”

The covers twist and the lights go out again. The night is black and lovely. The stars are very strong.


End file.
